


Nurse French

by Monkess



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3069662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monkess/pseuds/Monkess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a Tumblr prompt which took a life of its own.</p><p>Non-magical AU Storybrooke, Mr Gold wakes up in a hospital, Belle is a nurse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nurse French

There had been brief, strange moments of painful lucidity between what must have been long, dark dips into complete obliviousness to time, space, and his sense of self, but eventually, Mr Gold had to wake up. He recalled having been in a lot of pain, and was aware that he was still in pain, but the sensation a fair deal number now than it had been before, in those brief moments of open-eyed terror at the sterile white lights above him while he thought his whole body would turn against him and tear itself into shreds.

This time he wouldn’t be betrayed into opening his eyes and staring up at those white lights that hurt his eyes, no. Mr Gold squeezed his eyes shut as he drifted towards consciousness, gradually sensing all that was not as it should have been. For one, he could barely breathe without the suggestion of  _painpainpainpain_ , and drawing a deep breath was out of the question.

Then there was the matter of the tubes. They were everywhere, constricting and invasive, pushing oxygen into him through his nose, dripping something into his bloodstream, and worst of all, the most discomfort cause by what must have been a catheter.

Mr Gold wasn’t a praying man, but he steeled himself and decided to open his eyes, hoping and even demanding that he should be in a hospital. It would explain the bleak white lights and the rest of it, and if he was not, then, he would have to murder someone with a cannula.

Opening his eyes was slow work. He kept wanting to close them and drift back off to the groggy sleep he’d been in for who knew how long. Once his eyes were open he managed to turn his head just enough to take a look at the IV bags on the pole by his bed.

He was fairly sure he was in Storybrooke hospital. He was fairly sure he wanted to be out of Storybrooke hospital as soon as possible too, but even with his stubborn self-suffiency, Mr Gold could see he was not going to manage even sitting up.

Slowly he turned his head again. He was alone in the room. There was another bed, but it was vacant. It was dark out, and only half of the white, clinical fluorescent lights were turned on. Night time.

With a hand soon shaking from exertion, he reached towards the call-button by his bed. Soon enough, one of the night-time nurses burst into the room in loose-fitting hospital scrubs, hair tied back in a pony tail. Mr Gold could recognize her, it was Moe French’s daughter, Belle. Moe French was deeply indebted not just to Mr Gold but to a few other people around town. Mr Gold recalled Belle helped her father with the flower shop while studying something or the other. Well, that something must have been nursing then.

Nurse French spoke something while Mr Gold’s brain did as it always did, collecting information about people and putting those little bits together so he might come up with an upper hand negotiating terms if anyone should come to him for a deal. Multitasking was a little bit more difficult now though, with his current state.

“Mmh?” He could manage.

“Your condition is stable, doctor Whale will see you in the morning. There’s painkillers in your IV, so you might feel a bit unsteady,” nurse French repeated herself, voice all sweetness and patience, now that he could it up.

“Wh… What happened?” Mr Gold managed to ask, after a false start.

Nurse French remained quiet for a moment.

“There was an accident. You were run over by a car,” the nurse admitted, at length.

That jolted his memory. Accident indeed. And not just any car,  _his own damn bloody damn well car_ , Mr Gold thought, driven by  _his own bloody father who’d run off from his nursing home in Florida to come to fucking Maine to drive over his own son, for fuck’s sake that miserable little fart was going to have what was coming to him, he’d find him a nursing home from Alaska next where they’d keep him in a cellar and feed him with nothing but turnips…_

Mr Gold’s consciousness must have left him, for the next time he opened his eyes, it was morning. It was too bright again. He heard doctor Whale speaking to someone, and take his leave. Mr Gold opened his eyes, expecting to see nurse French again, but it was some middle-aged prune-faced hag, who offered him no greeting, no information, and no conversation. She put a new bag on his IV stand and attached it to the cannula.

Mr Gold regarded the woman wordless, and then remembered why it was possible she was not in the mood for small-talk. He’d driven the woman’s senior mother out of her house. Poor mortgage choices, pressured onto the old woman by her continuous problems with cancer. Well, who was to blame Mr Gold, if the old bats of Storybrooke couldn’t manage their finances.

He was awake for a while, but it was deadly boring, alone in a quiet room of stark white lights and white walls. The stern-faced, quiet nurse fed him tea and porridge, and neither one of them said nothing. He had no intention of telling the nurse about how much in pain he was in, and she probably had nothing kind to say to him. After that, he fell asleep again.

Mr Gold woke up in the evening, a little before the night-shift nurse came to give him dinner. Nurse French smiled again as she entered. The whole room that had felt cold during the day was suddenly a warmer, happier place when Belle French was there. Her feeding him was far less humiliating than the morning’s performance had been.

Until nurse French moved on to business. “Right, I’m going to have to change your catheter,” she said, glancing down at the blankets and between Mr Gold’s legs.


End file.
